Andrew Bird brings whimsy/whistling to fans across America this summer/fall

Professional violinist/whistler extraordinaire Andrew Bird will spend the summer wandering through the backroads of America, bringing his unique brand of folky Americana to the good people of California and several Northern states. The tour starts with a stop at Brooklyn’s Prospect Park Bandshell, where he will play a free show to a crowd of men dressed like barbershop quartet members and women who say things like ‘the bee’s knees.’ (That’s how I envision it, at least.)

The merry songster will continue his reign of mirth in the fall, as, accompanied by the turning leaves and a lingering sense of nostalgia, the seasons change and Mr. Bird departs Rochester, NY to journey through the original colonies. He’ll be playing similarly olde tyme-sounding venues, amongst them opera houses galore, with a music hall thrown in for good measure. Bird’s most recent recording was 2010’s live album Fingerlings 4. He also appeared on The Preservation Hall Jazz Society’s 2010 benefit album Preservation: An Album to Benefit Preservation Hall & The Preservation Hall Music Outreach Program.

4AD: it’s not just for wraith-like dream pop anymore! And it hasn’t been for a long time! I mean, c’mon, they’ve put out like five different Mountain Goats records. Take that, my own stated presumptions about 4AD! Still, it’s never seemed like the go-to home for dubstep guys. That’s slowly changing, what with their signing of Zomby and now, the announcement that Bristol-based Joker will be putting out a single via the label.

On May 16, 4AD will release a Joker 12-inch by the name of “The Vision.” The record’s A-side is a version of the song called “The Vision (Breathe In),” which differentiates itself from the instrumental B-side by featuring vocals from London-based singer Jessie Ware. Whether this is a one-off release or a longer relationship (as the Zomby signing seems to be) is unknown. Nobody knows it, not even Joker himself! Actually, Joker might know it.

It’s almost shocking to think that it’s been eight years since Elliott Smith passed away at age 34. Thankfully, he may be gone, but he is definitely not forgotten. A new documentary entitled Searching for Elliott Smith, by director Gil Reyes, is set to screen at the Los Angeles New Wave International Film Festival this month. For more information on the screening times, please visit the film festival’s website.

The documentary features interviews with Smith’s closest friends, including Good Will Hunting director Gus Van Sant and former girlfriend Jennifer Chiba. If you don’t live in Los Angeles, you can still celebrate Smith’s life by listening to five unreleased songs of his that recently surfaced on YouTube this past March. The song titles are unconfirmed, but searching for these titles may bring back a hit:

“She Won’t Look at Me”
“Where I Get It From”
“Like a Cop”
“I’m Gonna Get Crushed”
“Shiva Opens Her Arms”

Today’s weather forecast is cloudy with a chance of lawsuits. According to our TMT farm teams at Rolling Stone and Billboard, Google is rolling out their own cloud-based music service. Much like the Amazon cloud service that Mr P just totally made up off the top of his head as an early April Fool’s joke, Google Music is real. Terrifyingly real. Okay, almost none of that is true. But look! Paragraph two, here I come!

Google Music seems to offer a few significant upgrades to that clunky old Amazon Cloud Drive jalopy. For starters, it’s free while in Beta and comes with roughly 20,000 songs worth of storage space (in contrast to Amazon’s 1,000 songs-worth). It also seems to work a little better with all of the stupid, non-recyclable shit that a lot of us already own. A special Music Manager tool, available for both Windows and Mac, lets users add songs directly to Music Beta simply by clicking on a certain folder (like the iTunes Music folder), after which all of your songs, playlists, ratings, diary pages, and social security information are added to Music Beta. After the 800 hours it will take to upload your whole library to the ether, you can then stream all of your taste-making, list-topping music to any Google-linked device with internet access.

So what are the cons? Well, let’s see: unlike Amazon’s thing, you can’t actually purchase music with Google Music. You can only grab stuff you’ve already got. Also, it needs flash to work at the moment, so it’s a no-go for iPhones and iPads. Aaaand since its Beta, it’s invite-only right now, which I suppose is frustrating, although I’m pretty sure everyone knows someone who works for that company in some capacity. Oh yeah, and there’s also that pesky little problem of Google, much like Amazon, not actually, technically, completely, per se getting, you know, permission from the labels to go ahead with this service. But in his keynote presentation earlier today, Google’s Paul Joyce stated that he talked to some of the label’s girlfriends when he ran into them at the gym the other week and he’s “like, pretty sure” that it’s “all gravy.” God, I miss Lala.

This summer, Japanese experimental metal gods Boris will be allying with new Sargent House labelmates Russian Circles for a tour of drone, destruction, and Europe Europe Europe!!!! 2011 looks to be a hectic year for Boris, and the upcoming tour looks like it’ll be nothing to sniff at either. LA-based Sargent House is slated to release Boris’ 16th album Heavy Rocks AND their 17th album Attention Please, both on May 24 (the release dates for both albums were pushed back from a previously planned April date). The group’s 15th album, simply known as New Album, was released on CD via Tearbridge, and on LP via Daymare. This album is not expected to be released outside of Japan.

Lest you think they’re getting soft, allow me to inform you that Boris also released another album in Japan earlier this year with Merzbow. It’s called Klatter and it’s the sixth collabo between Boris and Merzbow. Originally slated for release on Troubleman Unlimited back in 2007 (which didn’t happen, for mysterious — or just plain not available on Wikipedia — reasons), the album is limited to a single pressing of 1,000 copies.

Are you looking for a little peace and calm this summer? Ready to just sit back and relax with a good book? Instead of doing something mundane like reading, you could be relaxing with Lil Wayne’s newly announced summer tourdates. It’s true, Lil Wayne’s tourdates will leave you feeling refreshed and rejuvenated — like you can take on anything.

So what if every venue he’s playing is named after a corporate giant (Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, you name it) and if you attend, you will most likely have crowds of thousands that you’ll have to navigate through. Lil Wayne’s tourdates are there for you, when you need them the most. Lil Wayne’s newest album, Tha Carter IV, is also there for you as of June 21 via Young Money Records.